Martín Jacinto, Department of Sociology In a farewell piece as editor of Teaching Sociology, Stephen Sweet writes that teaching sociologically, “requires understanding teaching as a social act that is conducive to study, vigilante empathy to understand the lifeworlds...
Active learning
The Benefits of Multirole In-Class Critiques for Students
Ivy Guild, MFA, Department of Art Typically used in design or art-oriented courses, a critique is a collaborative feedback technique for providing students with oral formative and summative assessments from their instructor and peers. In most educational settings,...
Incorporation of Collaborative Learning in Classroom Teaching
Jawad Fayaz, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering For centuries, classroom teaching has been mainly based on the conventional approach of lecturing by faculty members and learning being evaluated by traditional examinations. This approach does not lead...
Instructing Mathematics to Students With Wide Ranges in Prior Knowledge
David Clausen, Department of Mathematics When teaching introductory college math courses, one finds a wide variety of students. In a calculus class, you might have people majoring in mathematics who need a conceptual understanding of “why” as well as facility with...
Two Misconceptions about Group Work/Collaborative Learning
Matthew Cheung, Department of Mathematics There are two misconceptions about group work and collaborative learning that need to be addressed. Group Work and Collaborative Learning May Not Always be Ideal As a teaching assistant at UC Irvine, I question other teaching...
The Case for Meta-Integration Collaborative Activities (MICAs)
Mayan K. Castro, M.A., Department of Psychological Science What is a MICA? This is a call for a new type of assignment: a Meta-Integration Collaborative Activity (MICA). The goal of a MICA is to present an explicit opportunity for students to connect the dots among...
Why Group Work and Active Learning Help to Complement Professions in the “Real World”
Ian Baran, Department of Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy Whether the reality of all classes or not, we have our image of the prototypical classroom. Large or small, we visualize it similarly: students sitting, some visually engaged, others taking notes,...
How to Increase Student Reading in the English Classroom
Nathan Dean Allison, Department of English In one of her numerous Faculty Focus articles, Maryellen Weimer notes, “On any given day only 20 to 30 percent of the students arrive at class having done the reading.” This data would be somewhat unsettling in classrooms...
Flipped Classrooms and Second Language Acquisition
Alejandra Castellanos, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Tell me and I will forget; teach me and I will remember; involve me and I will learn Chinese proverb At the end of a first week in intermediate Spanish, a student emailed me complaining that she wasn’t...
Redefining the Purpose of Education in the Information Age
Prince Paa-Kwesi Heto, Department of Political Science How is the technological revolution changing the world of education and the art of teaching? The easy access to information due to the Internet and changing hiring practices are transforming education in...